Book 2 Chapter 30: Scouts and Bunker

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After exchanging a few light conversations with Daz and Crusher, Sean decided to go to sleep, leaving the two powerhouses alone in the large living room.

Daz thought the man who was only a few years older than himself was a bit.... odd, but other than that, he was as ordinary as day, so the young Reaper quickly put this meeting into the back of his mind.

"So, Lord," Crusher called Daz as she grabbed a biscuit from the coffee table in front of her and stuffed it into her mouth, "What's the plan here?" she asked.

Daz held his chin and tapped his finger across his cheek. "I have a feeling we'll be given the chance to fight those 'Raiders' that Adam and Rocky mentioned."

"I think so as well. The rewards are too good from the quest for a simple 'go to point A then return home' mission, right?" Crusher scratched her head and took out her sledgehammer to polish it after she had finished devouring the cookies.

"There's only one thing that concerns me," Daz said as he swept back his hair and groaned lightly.

"Hmm?" Crusher responded half-heartedly. She greatly enjoyed maintaining her weapon and she found it very easy to get absorbed into that task which led to her ignoring everything else.

"What resources does this 'Ed' character have that it warrants Adam and Rocky to be so cautious of him and the Raiders? I have a feeling that they have a tank or two. Crusher, can you survive being fired at by a tank?" Daz looked at Crusher intently.

"Dunno," she replied with a shrug before grinning wildly. "But there's only one way to find out, isn't there?"

Daz smiled. "I suppose you're right." He stood up and cracked his neck "I'm going to go outside to train for a bit. I feel kinda stiff from the long journey here. Do as you like, but don't do anything stupid, okay?"

"Sure thing, Lord. I know that ya wanna take over the world. I won't fuck that up for you on purpose, hahaha!" Crusher laughed. She was usually tactless, but even she knew when to behave properly.

Across the street from the house Daz and Crusher were in, two men and a single woman were sat by a window in a tall building, each of them had binoculars plastered to their eyes and they were cautiously keeping an eye on everything that moved.

'I need to pee,' the young dark-skinned woman thought to herself as she knocked her knees together. 'This sucks. I know I agreed to help with all the scouting missions and that kinda stuff... but come on, it's so late... I really need to pee... When's the next shift coming to take over?'

"Oi," the older man of the two, a skinny and bald guy wearing a pair of red-lensed sunglasses called his two companions. "The dude, 'Sek', was it? He left the building. Looks like he went to the garden."

The other man, a teenager no older than seventeen with spikey gelled-up black hair stopped chewing on his gum for a moment as he readjusted his binoculars. "Oh, that's pretty cool. A red shovel just popped out of his hand. I wonder if it was in a dimensional storage skill or something? Those things are fucking expensive."

"Who knows," the older man said. "Whaddya think he's doing?"

"Training I guess?" the young teenager replied.

"This late at night?" The skinny man wasn't convinced.

"Have you even looked at him?" With a grand gesture, the young man pointed at Daz before adding, "That guy's a fucking badass! Just look at his arm and that freaking face. Badasses don't need sleep, that's a fact."

"Whatever. You're so full of shit half the time, Fred. Anyway, do you think we should report this to Zach?" the older man asked as he stretched his back and shoulders. Clearly, staking out Daz and Crusher had made his body go rigid.

"Love you too, Sorolla." Fred blew a kiss to his friend sarcastically.

The woman of the group frowned. "Will you two stop dicking around? Just report it to Zach already, also, tell him to send the next shift earlier."

"What's up, Anne? Need your beauty sleep?" Sorolla laughed.

Fred held his mouth while he tried to hold back a chuckle and he said, "If she was going to have beauty sleep, she'd enter a coma."

"Fuck off," Anne blushed. She grabbed the walkie-talkie from Sorolla's belt and told their commander, Zach, about every single thing Daz was currently doing.

'They switched again,' Daz noted mentally as he performed his skill, Grave of the Humans, for the second hundredth time. Of course, Daz's high stats and natural intuition allowed him to easily detect that he was being watched. He couldn't tell by whom or from where, but he was able to sense when the eyes looking at him changed.

It was roughly six in the morning and he'd been training non-stop with the lazy Reika perched atop his head. 'That was the third swap, I think? They're really keeping a close eye on me. I suppose Adam wasn't all talk, was he?'

To distract himself from this fairly inconsequential matter, Daz checked the progress he had made on his newest skill.

Grave of the Humans [D-Rank (Lower Tier)]

Description

A skill self-developed by the young Reaper of Earth, Daz.

He had witnessed a far superior version of this skill and through great aptitude and willpower, was able to recreate a far weaker version of it that his body could handle.

Level

Max (Evolution possible with Merit Points)

Abilities

Allows the host to use his patron God's energy to create a grave. There is no limit so long as the patron God has the needed energy to spare.

Requires the use of a shovel to activate.

Daz had discovered a few valuable pieces of information from training this skill all through the night. For starters, it levelled up obscenely fast. Once again, Daz pinned this onto the fact that it was a skill heavily aligned with his class and his species.

The other two things of note were that the max level for a skill seemed to be level ten and that once he had reached that point he could upgrade the skill for a ridiculously cheap price when compared to the original price.

After checking the system, he found out that it would cost him only ten-thousand points to do so. Unfortunately, Daz was completely devoid of merit points right now, so he was planning to buy the next tier of the skill as soon as he and Crusher had completed their 'Adventure Out of Waterford' quest.

'This skill's weird,' the soul resting on Daz's head claimed.

"You're not wrong, Reika," Daz whispered in response. He sat on the ground and gathered his thoughts. "It's weird, but I can see so many uses for it at a stronger level. If I could do it at the same strength as Cecil during the fourth attack, then this wouldn't have happened to my body," he claimed as he clenched his ethereal hand.

'You never did tell us how that happened to you,' Reika pointed out as she hovered in front of Daz's face.

"Becuase there's nothing to tell. I was being an idiot... Really, I wonder what came over me?" Daz recalled his act of unnatural selflessness and frowned.

Ever since that moment, he had been changing. It took him a couple of days to notice, but he could now see it as bright as day. His affinity was being altered and he couldn't actively stop it. 'Is this a good thing, or not? More importantly, how will it affect my next evolution?'

Daz decided to sit and ponder over a few things as he waited for Adam and Rocky to find him. he was still rather excited at the idea of consuming a greater soul, after all, so he was highly anticipating the events that would unfold later that day.

The sun was now creeping over the horizon and Daz had resumed his training. "You're a hard worker, I see," a familiar voice said from Daz's back.

"Good morning, Adam," Daz replied as he returned Hamson to the brand on his hand. He turned around and walked up to his former co-worker. "No Rocky?"

"As much as he wanted to come too, I insisted he stayed at the command centre and listen to a few requests from our people. Managing three-hundred citizens without a solid infrastructure is a chore and a half, I tell ya," Adam explained with a sigh before lighting up a smoke.

"Fair enough. So, the Baetylus?" Daz asked with a somewhat impatient tone to his voice.

Adam smiled faintly. "No beating around the bush with you, huh?"

"I've been sitting out here passing the time for the last eight or so hours. Sorry if I come across as a bit hasty. Free stat points have that effect on me," Daz shook his head as if it were simply the most natural reaction to have in this situation.

"Hahaha, That's good. I prefer honesty over that deceptive bullshit. I should really invest some merit points into getting a skill that detects lies," Adam laughed sourly and then turned around while he motioned for Daz to follow him.

'If only. A skill like that costs two-hundred thousand merit points minimum.' Obviously, such an ability like lie detecting was on Daz's 'skills-to-get' list.

"So, Sek," Adam said as he led Daz through the base's buildings, "What's the situation like back in Waterford?"

"Stable. Nothing as insane as a meteor crashing into the city or anything," Daz replied without revealing much.

"That's good to hear... What do you think's gonna happen in the next cycle?" Adam asked in an attempt to make some conversation as they strode through the base.

The two were now stood in front of a bunker of some sort. There were six men stationed outside of it and they were all standing in formation. They were armed with assault rifles and battle gear bought from the system as far as Daz could tell.

"Captain Stiller, reporting in. The body is ready and all protective measures have been activated," the burliest man and the apparent leader of the six men said as he saluted Adam.

Daz raised an eyebrow at this. Adam returned the salute and thanked the men. He then entered the bunker with Daz and the two began walking down the long corridor that led to the core of the underground facility.

"'Captain'?" Daz asked while he looked around and closely inspected the design and materials of this bunker. It was obvious to his eyes that this was something that had been purchased from the system and it interested him a bit.

"Yeah," Adam nodded his head. "I'm actually the second strongest person in Gem Kingdom... damn, saying that name out loud is more embarrassing than I expected," he murmured.

"Second? Then who's the first?" the young Reaper asked with curiosity in his voice.

Daz had already thoroughly inspected Adam and Rocky, so he knew that Rocky's class and Species weren't optimized for combat while Adam's had a lot of utility in battle and he was very versatile. The young Reaper found it difficult to imagine someone here that could beat Adam in a fight.

"Commander Zach. I'm sure you two will meet sometime today before you leave," Adam replied while he took a drag from his fourteenth cigarette of the morning.

At the bottom of the hallway, there was a massive metallic gateway that had a touchpad of some sort attached to it. Placing his palm gently onto the device, Adam watched the two halves of the door slowly slide open.

Daz and he walked through and were met by a large open room that only had a few crates in it and a small cylindrical tube of some sort which was in the centre of the chamber. The young Reaper could see a body floated peacefully in a gooey substance within the glass container. Cleary, that was the Baetylus.

"Do what you need to. Mess with the body though, and you'll be blown to bits," Adam said with a light sigh before he leaned against the wall and prepared another cigarette.

Daz nodded in agreement and walked up to the dead Baetylus. 'No harm in identifying it first, right? I'm pretty curious as to why they're being so protective of a simple monster body...'

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